I haven’t seen a thread on this yet. Here is NPR’s story.
I am disturbed that the first thing I think of is that this could likely be a false flag operation, to distract the Russian public from such things as the recent protests, and possibly embarrassing links to Trump, as well as Medvedev’s apparent inability to control his gaudy showing-off of his ill-gotten fortune. And because I daily expect something similar to happen in our own country, for similar reasons.
So am I.
Blaming the victim doesn’t make a bit of sense; even if you were right and Putin wanted to kill people to distract from domestic issues, he’s currently at war with a bunch of completely irredeemable bastards, so why wouldn’t he go kill them instead of bombing his own tourism capital?
That’s what a false flag operation is, a domestic attack that you can blame on someone else, so that you can be the hero that saves the country and get (even more) support and unquestioned authority to do what you want to squash your enemies, real or imagined.
I’m not clear how I was “blaming the victim”. The victims of this act are those Russians who were killed or injured by the blast, and their loved ones and associates in radiating waves outward. I’m certainly not blaming them. “Russia” can’t be described as the victim, nor can Putin. So what victim is it you imagine I am blaming?
It will be soon (if it has not been already) discovered that Muslims are the perpetrators of this atrocity.
My husband and I spent hours on the phone and online yesterday, trying to contact loved ones and friends. Thank God, no one we know was among the dead or injured so we feel very fortunate. But we are absolutely heartbroken to know that others were not as lucky. We heard many cases of close calls (someone decided to take a trolley instead of the metro, several people had been traveling on that line not long before the explosion, someone was supposed to be in that area but a meeting had been canceled).
Residents of the city responded to these terrible events with courage and kindness. There were many reports of people in the metro coming to the aid of the injured without thinking of their own personal safety. With the metro shut down, the rest of the city transport system was overwhelmed with passengers. So quite a large number of ordinary citizens with cars volunteered to take people wherever they needed to go. Cafes offered free hot coffee and tea. Small, quiet acts of human decency. But this is why I love St. Petersburg so much. St. Petersburg, the city of my heart.
Люблю тебя, Петра творенье.
The people of St. Petersburg do sound wonderful, thanks for sharing that info chaika.
Glad your loved ones and friends are all right.
Could be Chechens, Muslims, or Chechen Muslims.
Could be a false flag op.
Could be the latest in the recent series of assassinations, targeting a specific individual under cover of a larger attack.
Could be a lone nutter.
Could be any of those, or something else. This is the world we live in now.
My sympathies to the families of the dead and injured, regardless of why it happened.
Considering the latest from Syria about gas attacks against civilian populations followed by strikes against hospitals that the wounded were taken too, as well as Russia’s own home grown acts I’d say the odds of it being a false flag are less than it being one group or another taking revenge. The bitch is…you could, without resorting to convoluted CTs, see Putin et al doing this as a false flag. Usually, when I hear ‘false flag’ I think ‘nut case CTer’, but in this case it’s completely plausible and not even that much of a stretch.
I don’t think this is what happened, but it COULD have happened. Most likely, though, it’s Russian chickens coming home to roost. The victims didn’t deserve it any more than the victims of 9/11, or the attacks in France or elsewhere deserved what happened to them. 